Peter Lindbergh, the poet of imperfection

He was one of the great fashion photographers of his time, although fashion brought him careless.In any case, clothes always counted less than the person in front.Peter Lindbergh preferred to look at what each of his models hid under the facade.He died in September 2019, at 74.Before he had time to change fashion photography forever (and, surely, also dry fashion).Opposite to the dictatorship of the retouch.His rough black and white, with almost documentary and undisputed texture expressionist inspiration, contributed an apex of subversion to a world ruled by ostentatious luxury and the hysterical smile.The bodies he photographed were still normative, but Lindbergh exhibited them without makeup or artifice, wrapped in a simple white shirt.In an era that seeks healthier and more inclusive beauty models, its legacy shines more than ever.That was his particular dissent.

Lindbergh's work is now claimed by a great retrospect in A Coruña, the only Spanish stage of his posthumous Untold Stories project, which has been seen in recent months in different German and Italian cities.The exhibition will travel, from December 4 to February 28, 2022, a set of 150 images selected by Lindbergh himself, which spent two years rummaging in his files, at the proposal of the Kunstpalast of Düsseldorf, until he finds the perfect balance between images between imagesiconic - the ones that starred the supermodels of the nineties - and other unknown and even unpublished.The exhibition, which will occupy an old industrial hangar of the drum spring, in the port of A Coruña, is the result of Marta Ortega's personal effort, the heiress of Inditex, who had a friendly relationship with Lindbergh with Lindbergh.In the photographer's images, the daughter of Amancio Ortega, who supervises the women's collections and the development of Zara as a global brand, among other things, discovered something that was close, a natural and somewhat gross aesthetic that adjusted to herway of understanding fashion.After coinciding during a scorching summer in the French city of Arlés, where Lindbergh spent part of the year drinking pastures under the siege of the mosquitoes, Marta Ortega proposed to take the photos of her wedding in 2018, fascinated by "The Eternal Aura" withthat Lindbergh gave those who underwent their gaze.

“I remember its natural and immediate connection with the environment, with Galicia and with A Coruña.Peter was a genius as a photographer, but as a person he was a stratospheric human being, affectionate, patient.The proximity when working is reflected in the result.You have to feel comfortable at such an intimate and special time for oneself and your family, ”Ortega explains in an email, breaking with his legendary discretion and media fasting.“Peter Lindbergh's gaze is very deep and puts people ahead.Particularly, to a strong woman, who has control of her life.As he said, he tried to free the woman from the tyranny of perfection.That is your differentiating element and what your work does so relevant and lasting, ”he adds.If your photograph lasts, it is also because it is not linked to an ephemeral trend, but to timeless beauty.“For me, there is nothing more modern than his way of treating fashion.Peter was above any frivolity or floriture, because he knew howIrving Penn.His favorite image will also be in the exhibition: a frame that Lindbergh made in 1990 for Vogue Italia in which the model Helena Christensen walks next to an extraterrestrial child through the Californian desert.

Last summer, Zara has already launched a collection of t -shirts and sweatshirts with snapshots of the photographer with the faces of pretty evangelist or Amber Valletta.Behind the operation were Ortega and Benjamin Lindbergh, the greatest of the four children of the photographer, who runs since 2016 his study in Paris, a ground floor located in a Saint-Michel alley stuck to Seine.Two years after his death, this 40 -year -old man continues to talk about his father in the present, as if he continued among the living."He is still a bit blurred in my head," he says with a teeth and kind smile, almost identical to his father's.He started working with Lindbergh as an assistant at the end of his adolescence.“I told him that I was going to take a sabbatical year to travel the world.He replied that it seemed an excellent idea.‘And how do you plan to pay?’.Nor had I gone through my head that I wouldn't bid the whim ... ”he recalls."Peter was born in a poor family.He went against his ideals that we lived as spoiled children.He transmitted the taste for the effort and I appreciate it, because it was a great vital lesson, ”says Benjamin, at the head of the foundation that spreads and protects his father's legacy.

Actually, Lindbergh did not always like to be associated with his ex officio colleagues.“Most fashion photographers are authentic idiots, with three or four exceptions.That is why I do not like to hang that label sometimes, because I don't want to have anything to do with them, ”he confessed, only half a joke, during an interview at a Parisian hotel in 2013.“I had no problem with fashion, which is what feed it, but with some stereotypes linked to it.In his photographic sessions he worked in a relaxed and harmonious way, without absurd hierarchies.In a world like fashion, so dominated by the ego, he was very surprising, ”says his son.If Lindbergh became the favorite of the supermodels it may be because he treated them with an inhabitual respect, as if they were co -producers of the resulting work and not as a mere cattle.

“Well, here I am, in Deauville.17 years.Naked.A bracelet ristra on each arm.It's freezing.It does not stop raining.But I'm enjoying every minute.Because it is Peter and I know that I am safe, ”recalls Naomi Campbell in the book Raw Beauty, which is published coinciding with the exhibition and that collects the testimonies of Kate Moss -” was a huge bear, smiling and adorable, ”he says -,of his friend and companion Paolo Roversi, of his gallery owner Larry Gagosian or one of the many stars he portrayed, as Penelope Cruz."Peter really knew how to photograph a woman.I always managed to capture the character of the person in front of the camera.There is nothing imposted, and that was what he was looking for in his photos, ”says the actress in the book.Rosalia, one of the last ones who posed for him, remembers that he made her manicure take off."I had my doubts.Until I saw the photos.I understood it there.They have an eternal, mythical aura, and at the same time they give off a tremendous freshness, ”he says in the book."The poet of the imperfect", the secondary the artist Michael Benson, in which it is perhaps the most successful definition.

Actually, Lindbergh came from another place.His models were Brassaï, August Sander, André Kertész, Diane Arbus or the Becher marriage, which spent half a life photographing industrial buildings with the rigor of an entomologist.He liked the rugged and rocky nature.Fritz Lang's films.Take photos on beaches swept by the north wind and the deserts without oasis in sight, oxidized train tracks and disuse factories.His imaginary was that of postwar Germany, having been born in the Poland annexed in 1944, before leaving to live in Duisburg, the German capital of the steel, when he was still a baby."The image that seemed more beautiful in the world was a naked tree," recalls Argentine designer and photographer Juan Gatti, one of his closest friends.They met in 1986, when he was Loewe's art director and hired Lindbergh for a campaign, four years before his jump to stardom by Anna Wintour, who offered her first cover on the US Vogue, true point ofinflection towards minimalism that would be imposed in the first ninety."We understood each other immediately.Until the poor man died, we did everything together: eight books, three exhibitions, two Pirelli calendars, vacations and a few divorces.I feel a great emptiness, because it was my longest and more intimate relationship, ”says Gatti, which is self -defined, with sarcasm, as" the widow of Lindbergh ".

The photographer was a sober and sophisticated man.“It was like a peasant, but also a very refined man.In his images there is as much austerity as elegance, ”says Gatti.In 2002, they made the poster with her, by Pedro Almodóvar together.Gatti worked with both and believed that they would be understood perfectly, despite its apparent aesthetic discrepancies.It was the only occasion that he allowed his photos to color.Gatti suspects that the source of his artistic language was his youth.“In the background, the women of their portraits resemble those of their puberty.Marlene Dietrich is everywhere.I would say that Peter managed to revive, through photography, many of his sexual fantasies of his youth, ”he says.In Untold Stories, the book that is published next to the exhibition, Wim Wenders says goodbye to his friend with a poem he declared at his funeral, in the Parisian church of Saint-Sulpice.His verses praised the dignity that Lindbergh conferred to each and every one of his models.He said: “In the happiness of your gaze and before your camera, / people were not only beautiful, / not only supermodels, not only icons, / but women.And sometimes men ".